Dead Silence
by UrsineEnchantment
Summary: There is a single fact about space that Kara finds herself wrestling with frequently during those times when she's alone, when all of her thoughts about the past start creeping in...


**There is no sound in space.**

Was that fact a blessing, a final gift from Rao to her people, to _her?_ Or was it a curse, the final payback for a society that had spent so many years bringing the event upon themselves, spent so many years ignoring the agonized cries of the world suffering beneath their feet?

She could never figure out which of those she believed.

On one hand, it had spared her from _years_ of haunted memories she might have had. Memories of the sound of her very _world_ cracking and bursting and breaking to bits, every building that she had visited in her young life crashing to the ground like thunder, the roaring explosions and flying debris clanging against the small pod that sheltered her from such an _impossibly big_ storm of noises that could have been. She might have heard it all, born witness to the screams, the _desperate, agonized screams_ of her family and friends and _all of the Kryptonians_ she might have met someday, each voice reaching the pod right before she was flying too far away.

But she hadn't heard any of that. Oh, she could imagine it, and _had_ imagined it several times, or brought it into her nightmares. But it wasn't part of her final memories regarding those last hours. No, instead she could remember her mother's voice at breakfast, calm and full of love, carrying an aura of safety. She could remember further back, to the days before the tragedy, when Argo City was buzzing with life and happiness and she could recall _all of the little noises_ of her world and her people.

Maybe she _could_ consider that fact a gift for sparing her that single extra layer of sorrow from the event among everything else that she'd lost because of it, among all of the other parts of that time that tormented her, _still_ tormented her.

But on the other hand, it seems unfair for everyone else.

It seems really, truly unfair, that a planet as well-renowned and advanced as Krypton was, with all of their impressive feats and all of their history stretching back for thousands of years, an entire society full of advancements and ideas and knowledge...that it was just sort of... _snuffed out._ There was no cry echoing throughout the galaxy, no powerful last shout to let everyone know her planet's final words, her people's presence known to all far and wide. There was just eerie quiet, and she remembered being able to see out of the pod's window for just a moment, and it was strange, to see all of that happen and not hear anything other than her own breathing. To see chunks collapsing and burning everywhere, to know that there were _so many lives_ scrambling down there, running around or hunkering down with nowhere to go, waiting for their demise, but she couldn't hear any of it, could only watch Krypton's muted finale.

And once the fire and debris cleared, blown away and sucked into the cold and vast emptiness of space, no one would ever even know they were there. It would be almost as if Krypton had never existed to begin with. Their enemies would rejoice and do all they could to erase whatever evidence remained of Kryptonian victories or monuments, stories would cease to be passed down through generations on other worlds, eventually becoming a mere whisper, a cryptid of a civilization...and then forgotten entirely. They would be a ghost without a medium, lost and invisible, watching helplessly as what was once theirs was reclaimed, invaded, built on top of...That empty space was an unmarked grave.

A dying person should always have their last words, their final breaths to contribute to the universe.

Krypton had been muzzled, gagged in those last moments by the cruel laws of science. Perhaps that was fitting, since they'd ignored the subject's warnings for so long.

They could never shout those final words. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to cast that nagging injustice from her mind.

She supposed, if she really thought about it, she and Kal-El were Krypton's final statements. Two _desperate_ sentences, spat out into the galaxy with jumbled phrasing, awkward and frantic and not quite making sense.

But what good is that, if you don't know what you're supposed to say?


End file.
